Ok so you’re new to matched betting, maybe you’ve seen some ads for it, or watched some YouTube videos on the subject and now you’re potentially interested in giving it a go?
Well, I was pretty much in the same boat.
I first started matched betting back in 2013 (I think) and I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. It was all mumbo jumbo to me (still is to be honest and I have a betting profit of over 6 figures lol)
The first bets – how not to do it :/
I first saw an ad for William Hill bet £50 get a £50 free bet. I thought that was easy money. I signed up and placed £50 on Barcelona to win.
They lost.
The bastards …
So that was £50 down the drain. Boo. But I did have the £50 free bet they gave me. So I put all that on Real Madrid to win and luckily they did. I think the odds were 2.7 or something so with £50 free bet I walked away with a tenner profit, taking into consideration the losing £50 as well.
So What Do you do to not lose money?
While I was still butt hurt over Barcelona losing their game and losing me my £50, I did a bit of googling and realised how to do matched betting.
Basically you need to place a ‘lay’ bet.
What the heck is a lay bet?
I have seen the light fade from my mates eyes as I try to explain this, so I guess you’re going to be the same and could get bored very easily.
BUT if you can get past the boredom of the word laying, then laying is what you need to do to ensure you don’t lose money like I did.
So what is laying?
It’s where you place a bet on the team not to win. You do this on a place called the exchange, these exchanges are either betfair, matchbook or smarkets.
So to not lose money, you would place a bet for a team to win at the bookies, then go to the exchange and you would place a bet ‘a lay bet’ for the team not to win.
Still don’t get it. Me either lol! But basically there is a software that will tell you what to do below.
So how to make money with betting?
Alrighty, so to make money with matched betting you pretty much do the above strategy, sign up to a bookmaker, get the welcome offer by placing a bet with the bookie, then laying at the exchange so you DON’T lose money!
Once you placed your first bet then you unlock the free bet, so you would place the free bet with the bookie and then lay at the exchange again which ensures you get most of the free bet money.
Then you keep doing that sign up strategy to all the bookmakers.
The Welcome Offers!
So to do all these bookie welcome offers, you can either search for them, like I did, the first time around, which was ok, but a bit long winded.
Or,
Use Oddsmonkey.
Oddsmonkey is the software I now use to basically tell me what to do and what to sign up to.
As you can see from the photo below, as of July 2023 there are 54 sign up offers worth £904. Whoop Whoop!
And that is just the sign up offer strategy!
There is more stuff you can do later on, but it’s up to you if you want to do that or not.
As you can see from that photo, each bookmaker has a guide on what to do, which makes it super easy to smash through all the sign up offers and get that sign up betting profit!
So Is it worth it?
So I did all this back in June 2020, you can see my betting reports here.
I had a betting profit of £300 the first month, and £700 the second month.
My mate Adam was the one who told me about the software to use when I did this the second time around. The software he recommended was outplayed.com but I now use oddsmonkey as it is the better one now.
And man does that make it sooooo much easier to figure out matched betting. They have all the guides on what to do, and a forum so other members will post how much they made from each offer, which for me, helped give me the confidence to get going and do everything.
In my opinion you might as well give it a go for a month. Most people do the easy sign up offers then leave the matched betting world, which is fair enough. Others will continue doing it and find different strategies to get some extra betting profit for every month like I do. Heck if you get really good at it you can potentially earn more than a decent salary in a year!
So the cost? Well oddsmonkey has a free trial, so if you get really bored just doing the free tiral you won’t have lost anything, just your time. If you do find you kind of like it, then it’s £29.99 a month for the basic version or £49.99 a month for the premium version which has casino offers.
As you are new, and if you like the free trial, then just go for the basic subscription for the first month and then you can check out the casion offers later if you want to.
That’s what I did.
Summary
Well that’s pretty much my take on what to do if you want to get started with matched betting
- Sign up to Oddsmonkey
- Do the sign up offers (remember that £904 amount!)
- Then check out my advanced matched betting guide if you want to carry on
And that’s pretty much it.
Any questions let me know. If not, have fun! And I hope you give it a go and have some extra spending dosh at the end of the month. Good luck to you 🙂
